My Own Words: Touching exhibits and letting myself be touched by being exhibited
‘Young Birds from Strange Mountain’ at the Schwules Museum, Berlin
By Kukasina Kubaha
'My Own Words' is a monthly series which features personal essays by practitioners in the Southeast Asian art community. They deliberate on their locality's present circumstances, articulating observations and challenges in their respective roles.
Eda Phanlert Sriprom, ‘Playboy’, 2024, mixed media: PET bottles and discarded monk robes, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the Schwules Museum. Photo by Joseph T.
Art has the power to touch. Touching art has the power to evoke memories and entanglements. In early 2025, I finally had the chance to visit the exhibition ‘Young Birds from Strange Mountain’ at the Schwules Museum, Berlin. The museum is one of the first in Europe dedicated to telling stories of queer people. Yet, the stories curated here always felt out of reach to me, a Thai bisexual woman born in the 1990s, since they were often about interwar Germany and gay men. Therefore, when my friend told me he was co-curating an exhibition on Southeast Asian queer artists in the diaspora at the museum, I was excited to see how the curatorial team would tease out the nuances of migratory and diasporic experiences.
I am a young bird from a strange mountain,
Singing and playing with my itchy throat¹
Archive corner. Photo by Pha Croissant.
For a year, I anticipated this exhibition through its love and labour. When my dear friend, Ragil Huda, asked me if I wanted to loan a personal object as part of the archive corner of the exhibition, I immediately agreed. This object was to represent my journey to Germany, and so I thought of a banner where my family had written wishes for me at my farewell dinner. Even though I never hung the banner on my wall, knowing that it was in the back of my closet comforted me. It reminds me there are people at home who will always have my back. Thus, it was special for me to see it out of my closet, and in the museum’s vitrine — a cabinet of queer curiosity, if you will.
This piece of cloth is peculiar, somehow. My family knew I was traveling to Germany but instead of writing “Gute Reise” they opted for the more familiar phrase of “Bon Voyage”. They did, however, adorn the phrase with tiny German flags. Maybe that is why I am reluctant to put the banner up after these years; the sight of German flags evokes some sort of fear inside me.
Display case showing farewell banner. Photo by Pha Croissant.
I love the curators' conscious decision to hide the flags and let visitors only get a glimpse of the writings. The banner is exhibited in a glass vitrine, alongside a traditional Laotian skirt, an Indo-Malay sarong and a headpiece from the world’s only Islamic Boarding School for Transpeople in Yogyakarta. These objects are proof of how textiles are woven into Southeast Asian cultures, and they speak more than words can. Perhaps this is why visitors are invited to touch and feel many of the artworks.
When the morning wind blows in the leaves,
When the late moon rises, I brood over the blue sky.
Archive corner showing the various materials that people lent to the exhibition. Photo taken by author.
Contrary to my expectations, the archive corner is in fact the first chapter of the exhibition. Its extensive material on Southeast Asian queers reminded me our existence does not need validation from an institution because it speaks for itself. Thao Ho’s video ‘one who hears the cries of the world’ (2023) echoes throughout: “there were more memories in the memory box and the whimpers of queer elders elsewhere were passing it on”. This archival chapter features many manifestations of being queer: from party invitations, personal letters to queer magazines that knit the community together. I deeply resonate with these objects and stories, since these notions of queerness are specific to Southeast Asia and they contradict the overt visibility of queerness in Western understandings. Furthermore, I was fascinated by the books many people had contributed to the archive corner. Reading the books’ annotations felt like walking in someone’s mind, and it reminded me of our unique journeys.
Oat Montien, ‘American Dream Revisited’, 2024, mixed media installation: shibari ropes, clothes of the artist’s deceased father. Image courtesy of the Schwules Museum. Photo credit: Hai Nam Nguyen and Chi Phan.
As I traversed into the other chapters of the exhibition, I came across Oat Montien’s shibari piece, which is the tangible requiem to his late father. While holding it in my hands, I thought of my own parents: did they also think of me as a tied-up body? But tied by whose desires? The rope they hope still binds me is perhaps the obligations to family and constructed societal expectations.
From front to back: Tamarra, ‘Bongkar Pasang (Overhaul)’, 2024, mixed media installation: raffia ropes, bells, and wooden mask; Tamarra, ‘Uri-uri Ludruk (Preserving Ludruk)’, 2024, self-portrait series printed on canvas. Image courtesy of the Schwules Museum. Photo by Hai Nam Nguyen and Chi Phan.
Suriya Sam Khuth, ‘Dream-Messenger’, 2023, mixed media: cotton, linen, indigo fabric dye, Bombay ink, acrylic ink. Image courtesy of the Schwules Museum. Photo by Chonchanok Sattayatham.
Thinking in allusion to queer temporalities, the flow of the exhibition is organised in a circle. Visitors travel through the chapters in a non-linear manner unveiling fleeting musings of how spirituality and the queer body mingle with each other. The works by Eda Phanlert Sriprom, Suriya Sam Khuth and Tamarra reveal this concept through an intertwining of religion, be it Buddhism or Islam, and the transgender body.
Perched on a branch, the bird longs for its brook —
It will break into song and not know why.
Its undulating tunes cannot make the fruits grow ripe;
Its carols cannot help the flowers bloom.
Writing this one week after Thailand’s same-sex marriage bill came into practice, and one day after Friedrich Merz declared his 5-point plan against immigration in the German parliament, I could not help but be shook from all the whirlwind of emotions. I am just celebrating a milestone for queer rights in my home country, but now have to face the fact that some Germans want people like me out of their land. Seeking solace in a space of stories close to my own grants me the sense of solidarity, but also the sentiment of being this ‘strange bird’ heightened. Maybe deep down, I am in denial of embracing being a migrant in the diaspora. It carries connotations, but in the end are we not always in motion and crossing borders?
Nothing can be gained from the singing, and yet
The bird will burst its throat and heart to sing its best.
It is funny to me that one of the first questions I was asked in Germany was about bird migration in Thailand. It took me years to understand that I am perhaps the bird in question. This young bird who flapped her wings from strange mountains, to stranger mountains. The wind took me to a colder place, nesting with birds from similar tropics. The grace and opportunity to touch these artworks in the exhibition empowered me to embrace the essence that birds not of the same feather can flock together too.
‘Young Birds from Strange Mountains – Queer Art from Southeast Asia and its Diaspora’ is on view from 29 November 2024 to 4 August 2025 at Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany.
About the Writer
Kukasina Kubaha is a translator, writer, and (aspiring) curator. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of Hamburg, where she is pondering on the question of the archive and how to build a counter-archive of Queer Women in Thailand's Deep South through literature, film and contemporary art.
